The license of the MySQL Server

The MySQL Community Server is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 whereas the MySQL Enterprise Server is under an Oracle proprietary license as you can see from the following diffs of 2 random files:

shell> diff mysql-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/share/charsets/latin1.xml mysql-advanced-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/share/charsets/latin1.xml
6,7c6,7
< Copyright (c) 2003, 2005 MySQL AB
< Use is subject to license terms
---
> Copyright (c) 2003, 2005 MySQL AB
> Use is subject to license terms.
9,20c9,20
< This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
< it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
< the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.
<
< This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
< but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
< MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
< GNU General Public License for more details.
<
< You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
< along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
< Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
---
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The lines above are intentionally left blank

This information can also be found in the following files:

mysql-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/COPYING
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
...
mysql-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/README
MySQL Server 5.7
This is a release of MySQL, a dual-license SQL database server.
For the avoidance of doubt, this particular copy of the software
is released under the version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
MySQL is brought to you by Oracle.
...
mysql-advanced-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/LICENSE.mysql
MySQL Server
Copyright (c) 2000, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This software and related documentation are provided under a license
agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by
intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license
agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate,
broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish,
or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering,
disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for
interoperability, is prohibited.
...
mysql-advanced-5.7.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64/README
MySQL Server 5.x
This is a release of MySQL, a dual-license SQL database server.
For the avoidance of doubt, this particular copy of the software
is released under a commercial license and the GNU General Public
License does not apply. MySQL is brought to you by Oracle.
...

Enterprise plug-ins of the MySQL Enterprise Server

Oracle/MySQL follows the open core business model with the MySQL Server. This means: The MySQL Community Server is the same as the MySQL Enterprise Server but the MySQL Enterprise Server has some additional modules and programs compared to the MySQL Community Server:

MySQL Enterprise Server Certification and Indemnification support

This is legal stuff. I only care about technical problems... If you have Open Source legal questions please get in contact with us and we will direct you to lawyers which are specialised in the Open Source field.

Different libraries

This is on one side a legal problem GPL vs BSD license. On the other side it is a political problem. Unfortunately the OpenSSL used in the MySQL Enterprise Server is actually a bit more feature reach than yaSSL.

We can also see the differences between the different SSL libraries when we search for the symbols:

MySQL Enterprise Server and MySQL Community Server packages

This is not directly MySQL Server related but it affects operation as well: We found today that the MySQL Enterprise Server RPM package and the MySQL Community Server packages were not prepared the same. The MySQL Enterprise Server for MySQL 5.7.15 package was still using sysV init scripts whereas the MySQL 5.7.15 Community Server package seems to use already SystermD unit files (since MySQL 5.7.6: Managing MySQL Server with systemd). This has change from MySQL 5.7.15 to MySQL 5.7.16 Enterprise Server. So if you side-grade from MySQL Community to MySQL Enterprise Server you might experience some surprises...

I found out that we were wrong in this. We have taken RHEL6 MySQL RPM packages instead of RHEL7 packages. This is the reason why the installation was not smooth (but it worked) and why still old sysV init scripts were used.

ShinguzWed, 2016-10-26 13:06

Navigation

Trademarks

RSSLinkedInTwitterXingFacebookFlickrGoogle+Follow @fromdual
MySQL, InnoDB and Oracle are registered trademarks of Oracle Corp. MariaDB is a trademark of Monty Program AB.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective owner.